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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

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Original poster

Celebrating being female

163 replies

Redonionricedpotato · 10/01/2018 10:30

Feeling quite despondent about the state of the world and how tough it can be to be female in 2018. So I thought I’d start a positive thread, to remind myself of all the positive things about being female. What are yours? Doesn’t matter if they seem trivial, please share!

OP posts:

BlindYeo · 10/01/2018 22:29

Personally I think the best thing about women is that they do not (in the absence of men) start wars or band together in armies to fight wars, causing thousands,even millions, of deaths.*

Also their sexual assault and violent crime rates are a fraction of men's. Those are the best things about women compared to men.

(*In my opinion female leaders like Elizabeth I or Margaret Thatcher acted like men in a man's world. That is different to what women as a whole, as a sex, tend to act like. By which I mean for example we have never seen, a 95-100% female army marching off to war like we see all the time with men.)

It would be fascinating to temporarily chemically castrate all the adult males of the world for a period of time and see the warmongering just STOP.

AssassinatedBeauty · 10/01/2018 22:33

I don't think chemically castrating men would have that effect, in fact it might make matters worse. Fury/rage at impotence, redirected.

I also find the whole process of pregnancy and birth to be astonishing. I have two children and I often think how remarkable it is that I made them and brought them into existence.

WhatWouldGenghisDo · 10/01/2018 22:40

Women are very interesting to get to know because they put the same amount of effort into figuring you out as you do them, so you end up with intricate, informed, intelligent relationships.

(Men have a tendency to just sit there waiting for you to figure them out and then cater to their foibles which is frankly dull as ditchwater)

Effic · 10/01/2018 22:50

lemon - I agree with you completely.

How depressing - a femanist thread that concludes the pinnacle of womanhood is that some of us can have babies and can breastfeed. Good grief

LangCleg · 10/01/2018 22:55

How depressing - a femanist thread that concludes the pinnacle of womanhood is that some of us can have babies and can breastfeed. Good grief

But it's pretty impressive and men can't do it, which is why it is devalued. Not very feminist to continue the devaluation, eh?

It's not that it's the pinnacle of womanhood for some women. It's that it's the thing only women can do and the mechanics of it are more impressive than anything a man's body is capable of.

AssassinatedBeauty · 10/01/2018 22:58

Yeah, creating new human life is totally not worth celebrating and being in awe of.

No on has said it's the pinnacle of womanhood, simply that it is something to celebrate.

cafeaulaitpourvous · 10/01/2018 22:58

I am fifty this year and my birthing days are over - and I mourn my loss of fertility.
I really wanted a 'natural' menopause as I have had two heavily medicalised births and many medicalised pregnancies. My own birth was heavily medicalised too.
But even though I tried I could not cope with the symptoms of menopause - I felt like I gave in when I started HRT

Which is a defeatist attitude. Fucking hell I am a fucking goddess and I deserve to feel well and happy . I did an amazing job bringing my girls into the world and nearly paid for my life both times. Their births have affected me physically since. The babies I lost have not been forgotten.

Also to top it off - being a mum for over 30 years has given me the gift of being able to look in an empty cupboard and rustle up something tasty... I think that trumps everything!

Doobigetta · 10/01/2018 23:00

I'm really, really disappointed that a thread that is supposed to be about celebrating womanhood threatened to descend, yet again, into a chasm between mothers trumpeting motherhood as the essence and pinnacle of femaleness, and non-mothers being excluded and patronised and having to defend themselves.

When I think of what makes women awesome, I see a sea of faces. A judge. A construction worker. A writer. A surgeon. A chef. A teacher. A soldier. A ballerina. A mother. An admin assistant. A world leader. A priest, a thief, a hedge fund manager, a street sweeper. Someone who sells wedding dresses. Someone who makes sandwiches. Eleanor Roosevelt and Eleanor Rigby. Straight, gay, all races, all ages, all religions. We're all different, and we're all the same, we share the one thing that we were born with and will die with. It means nothing, and everything, and you can't define it or pin it down beyond body parts and chemicals, but there it is.

AngryAttackKittens · 10/01/2018 23:03

The idea that because women can do this amazing thing that men can't do that means that it's the only thing that we can do or that's important about us is very male. The OP asked for positive things about being female, being able to create an entire human being is one of them. How that's been interpreted as meaning that the people pointing out that this is a positive thing that only women can must mean that it's the only thing we're good for, on a feminist board, I'm not sure. Consider the source, eh?

AssassinatedBeauty · 10/01/2018 23:04

"non-mothers being excluded and patronised and having to defend themselves."
that's not what has happened on this thread.

"mothers trumpeting motherhood as the essence and pinnacle of femaleness"
neither is this.

AngryAttackKittens · 10/01/2018 23:06

For the record, I'm not a mother. Seeing other women celebrating the fact that they are doesn't make me feel diminished. Doesn't have to be an either/or situation.

BlindYeo · 10/01/2018 23:07

Ah it's only theoretical Assassinated I'll never be allowed to do it. But hormones really affect aggressive behaviour. It's why male animals are castrated all the time, not just for fertility reasons but also because they are less aggressive afterwards. Like cats, dogs and horses. Think of uncastrated bulls...they are terrifying.

AngryAttackKittens · 10/01/2018 23:10

Kind of OT but there was a guy in Spain who was on the news recently who rescues bulls from bull fighting and while that's a lovely thing to do and good on him the photos of him lying around in a field cuddling with the bulls did make me wonder if the follow-up story would be about him being gored or trampled.

Effic · 10/01/2018 23:12

It’s that it’s the only thing that women can do
OMFG

AssassinatedBeauty · 10/01/2018 23:13

Plenty of animals are still aggressive and out of control after being castrated. Plus in your theoretical situation men would know it had been done to them and why. Don't think it would go down well!

BarrackerBarmer · 10/01/2018 23:15

Oh
My
God

"this alone does not define me as a woman."

ME NEITHER. What defines me as a woman is that I'm female, which was established in the OP as a premise anyway.

How is it that you are so desperate to misrepresent what people are saying that you are both dismissive and negative about an amazing thing only women can do?

Can't you understand that "X can do this astonishing thing" does not mean "X believes this is the only worthwhile achievement"?

I can list my lifetime achievements if you like, but not many of them are uniquely female as such. And this isn't about individual females and their individual personalities. It's about female people and what we can do (that men can't or don't) that we can hang onto to have faith in our incredible sex whilst we're still the underdog after several millennia.

Could those superior smug posters who've dropped into this thread purely to snark a tone of "that? God, how sad that you imagine such a pathetic thing to be marvellous, you losers"

Could you just please find some other thread to be negative on? The OP asked for positive contributions because she was feeling down, and frankly, this isn't the right thread for you to sprinkle your vinegar.

AssassinatedBeauty · 10/01/2018 23:16

@Effic you've misquoted there which has changed the meaning. What @LangCleg said was:

"It's that it's the thing only women can do"

Do you see the difference?

LangCleg · 10/01/2018 23:16

It’s that it’s the only thing that women can do
OMFG

No. Try again. I said:

It's that it's the thing only women can do.

Two very different things.

LangCleg · 10/01/2018 23:17

Sorry, AssassinatedBeauty, was posting as you were.

OlennasWimple · 10/01/2018 23:27

Giving birth was the single most empowering, primeval experience of my life. Miscarrying (twice) was when I felt at my most helpless. Different sides of the same coin.

And even though I've done it, I still cant' get my head around growing an actual effing person in me and then squeezing it out through my vagina (how? how does it stretch so much??)

we really come into our own in endurance events.

Yup, like life. The biggest endurance event of all

BarrackerBarmer · 10/01/2018 23:30

Pressing on...
Here's a thing. Growing up, my mum, her friends and sister in law all took care of the home in addition to their careers, mostly as teachers. My dad, my uncles held the higher paid professions and the women also did the domestic stuff too. As a know it all teenager, I was fairly disgusted at the sex division of status and chores, and I thought the women weak for letting it pass unchallenged.
Decades on, the men in retirement are shadows of themselves. Lost, without strong purpose and still without the skills to organise their lived well. Meanwhile, the women that I had thought so weak, are brighter, purposeful, full of humour and efficiency, organising lives, families, grandchildren, holidays, homes, just....handling life. Watching my mum handle my dad's heart attack revealed her to have a backbone of steel, despite the ease with which tears flow over a soppy song or grandchild's drawing. She is fortified to cope with life no matter what. Her friends are the same. I know that the men in their lives will simply not cope without their wives like the wives can without their husbands.

There is just a steely, good humoured resilience in these women that I once mistakenly thought belonged to the men. I was so, so wrong.

AngryAttackKittens · 10/01/2018 23:33

I can still remember the moment where my view of my mother's life shifted from "how did she allow this to happen to herself?" to "why is society organized in a way that forced her into being a housewife when she'd rather have had a career and why is my father ok with this?"

BlindYeo · 10/01/2018 23:44

I still believe a world in which men have less testosterone would be a less violent world. Their offending rate and warmongering is not all down to socialisation. Good socialisation can reduce it, but statistics to date show the male/female differential always remains even in the most peaceable society. This thread is about celebrating women. I celebrate our less violent nature. To me, male violence is like the elephant in the news reporting room. Every night. I wish they would divide the news up into "shit things women did today" and "shit things men did". I know which programme would be shorter and less horrific.

badabing36 · 10/01/2018 23:48

Fantastic post Barracker

AngryAttackKittens · 10/01/2018 23:49

"Shit things women did today" would be mostly men whinging about how some women wouldn't go out with them/wasn't as pretty as they thought she should be/didn't smile and giggle in response to being catcalled.

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